Phishing for Idiots

To me, spam and the internet have always been inextricably linked.  Remember the good old days when the daily influx of emails into your inbox were about 50% real emails and 50% spammers trying to sell you reduced price consumer goods, Viagra and porn?  Those were truly the good old days.  Then came the threat of phishers, people trying to trick you into giving out your personal information, passwords and bank info.  All of this quickly accelerated people's fear of identity theft, as if we didn't have enough to worry about with computer bugs and trojan viruses.

Well call me an oddball (you wouldn't be the first) but sometimes I miss that random absurd piece of spam that would float in with your normal emails and make your day.  Over the past few weeks, I've been keeping an eye on my now-overprotective email system's spam system, and I thought I would share a few instant (or in some cases old) spam classics.


1) payment

Well, at least it's straight to the point.  The interesting twist on this spam is that Femi Babafemi (fun name, right?) is actually working against spam artists.  Wow, that's really nice of him.  Apparently through all of this hard work at his really official sounding job he's amassed quite a load of money that he wants to share with me!

2) Dearest Friend

This one is just kind of awful.  Mrs. Marie Rajie is currently dying from terminal cancer in a London hospital.  She wants me to be the beneficiary of her gold and diamond fortune only if "God will in his infinite  mercies touch this project the way [she] promised" and donate the $1,550,000.00M USD to charities for the "poor and motherless babies home where I came from."  Wow, Marie, way to pull on the heartstrings.

3) Good News!!!

When I first saw this one, I knew it was going to be good because of the three exclamation points!  Apparently two boxes containing 2.5 million USD each were found in the London Heathrow airport with my name on them, so Rev. Frank Williams wants to send them to me.  That's really nice of him!

4) You won Patrick

I got really excited by this subject--I never win anything!  Unfortunately all I really won was the right to get spammed and cheated by 150 casino promotions "No max No Limits Extractions."

5) Be My Friend

So this one was actually a friend request I got on Facebook.  Always curious to see who's requesting my "friendship," I clicked on Mercedes Wrinn's profile.  Who wouldn't want to be friends with Mercedes and see her "etroic pcitreus".  By the way, while she was posting the link to these pictures (sign up required) she was having a great time at the mall!!


Gosh, these spam emails are almost as fun as the envelopes my mom used to get from the Publishers Clearing House that had fake checks and car keys in them!